Throughout his 25-year teaching career, Nguyen Khanh Hoan, a math teacher at Tran Phu Secondary School in Hoang Mai District, has always strived to be creative infueling students' love and passion in the study. His initiative, themed "inspiring students' interest in learning through practical lessons", has helped bring math closer to life.

Teacher Nguyen Khanh Hoan helps students of Tran Phu Secondary School (Hoang Mai district) to solve math exercises. Photo: hanoimoi.com.vn

Khanh Hoan, 47, graduated from Hanoi Teacher Training College in 1996 and has worked at Tran Phu Secondary School since 1997. He is one of the experienced and key math teachers in Hoang Mai. He is making outstanding contributions to improving the quality of education in the district.                                             

Hoan always thinks of how to make math more attractive to students, and more and more students love math. According to him, by doing this, he will help students gain confidence and achieve better results in the annual 10th-grade high school exams.                                    

Hoan told the New Hanoi Newspaper that mathematics is a basic science in all areas of life. For example, if students want to beautify their rooms, math can help them calculate the amount of needed paint or wallpaper. They can also do the math to help their mother determine the amount of seeds and seedlings suitable for planting in a given area to avoid wasting.  Despite being so practical, according to Hoan, many students still dislike learning math. Some are even afraid of this subject. The reason they confessed is that it's tedious and difficult.

After carefully surveying the students' difficulties and desires, Hoan gradually applied measures to help them become more interested in math. He develops an initiative on "creating students' interest in learning math through practical lessons". Accordingly, for each lesson, Hoan tries to find a way to link the knowledge with practice and build exercises with the same style for students to understand them quickly and remember them for a long time.

Teacher Hoan's efforts have helped improve the education quality at Tran Phu Secondary School. During the 2020-2021 school year, two students from the school won prizes at the 9th-grade math competition at the district level, and another won at the city level. The percentage of students admitted to 10th-grade public high schools is very high, and many have been selected to specialize in math classes.

 Hoan's initiative applied at Tran Phu Secondary School has positively affected students, helping them increase their passion and interest in math. According to the Vice Principal of Tran Phu Secondary School, Do Thu Phuong, Hoan is a teacher with a wealth of expertise dedicated to his profession and always respected and loved by his colleagues and students.

As the initiative’s effectiveness is proven, teacher Hoan shared it with other math teachers in the district. Thus, starting from the 2021-2022  school year, his initiative spread across Hoang Mai and brought about positive changes. The 10th-grade entrance exam scores of the district’s high school students are getting better and better and are now ranked among the top in the city.

Tran Minh Phuong, a student of class 8C, said that, as a student of teacher Hoan, she was confident enough in math to prepare for the 10th-grade exam. She would try her best to get the optimum results.

Cao Thi Minh Phuong, the mother of Tran Cao Son, a pupil of class 6D Tran Phu Secondary School, shared: "Although the semester has not been completed, I realize my child has made a lot of progress in math, especially in applying knowledge into practice. I like Hoan's teaching method, which is always focussing on solving real-life problems by math so that students can better understand the role of the subject."

At a conference held in late October 2022 for the teachers selected to the final round of the sixth "Hanoi Enthusiastic and Creative Teacher Award" to share their experiences in teaching, Hoan's initiative was highly appreciated by the city's board of judges, especially for its appropriate approach to the 2018 General Education Program of concretizing lessons through practical situations, reducing theory, and academic contents. This initiative has also received positive feedback from teachers in the city and responded to their desire to increase exchange, contributing to improving the quality of math teaching. Hoan, with his efforts to improve the quality of math teaching, was awarded the "Hanoi Enthusiastic and Creative Teacher Award" by the Hanoi Education Union for the 2021-2022 school year.